India’s education system made its first fateful step into muck when in the eighties the Central and State governments abdicated in favour of private parties. Ideally, donors and charities should have stepped in. But instead politicos, bootleggers and sundry other inhabitants of the netherworld, flush with ill-gotten wealth, took over. In fact, a politico without a college is not worth his loot. Some even quit politics to pitch into the more lucrative education business. In TN, for instance, a single politician, who is also a minister in Delhi, owns over 30 colleges of all streams. Lesser mortals of equal moral calibre still parade as educationists. A joker of a vice-chancellor is actually the most laughed at caricature amidst his own students, but thanks to money, his institutions are ranked on par with the best, at least in terms of facilities.
In the nineties, Mandal made the milieu murkier. The quota quagmire sucked in multitudes of meritorious students into its obscure depths while many a nondescript canditate from creamy layers of a statute-chosen caste floated above nonchalantly. And the jury is still out on whether the quota system has achieved its much touted objective of social justice. Meanwhile, at the dawn of every academic year, students would be anxiously hanging on thin threads of judicial interpretation on some matter or the other on quotas. Till two years back, at least in TN, there was also the painful tug of war between CET and plus two marks. Again, every April, many a deemed university risk getting damned along with its students, only to emerge unscathed on proper application of political grease. Capitation fee, which raises its ugly head annually despite media exposes of wads of paper that are notes but not exactly notes of the academic kind and SC strictures against them, thrives in all glory. The transactions have gone underground and have actually zoomed, with neither parents nor officialdom batting an eyelid. There are, no doubt, honourable exceptions, but their viability is uncertain.
All the aforesaid maladies are present in great abundance this academic year too. But a new threat, which has been festering quietly over the last few years, has suddenly surfaced this season: The scourge of scores. In a cut-throat competitive scenario, cut-off marks have become the cutting edge arbiter of intelligence. The ball was set rolling this year by the Delhi University which set a cut-off mark of 100% to gain entry into the colleges affiliated to it! But that is only the peak of a national trend of rising cut-offs. In TN, for instance, students aspiring for Anna University affiliated engineering colleges have to perform a few notches above their seniors of last year. ‘95% and nowhere to go’ screams a magazine cover story on the national education scene. If unchecked, in probably a couple of years the 100 ceiling would be the all pervading standard for students. And that is only because 101% or above is an arithmetic and academic absurdity. But trust the super smart ‘educationists’ to come up with non – quantitative criteria like subjective qualifications and rigged vivas so that even a 100% average does not mean cent percent assurance of a seat!
But alongside, we also witness the strange spectacle of students securing marks to match those cut-offs. If cut-off marks are higher than last year, so are the scores. So does it mean this year students are smarter and more intelligent than their one-year seniors? While that thought is quite tempting and rather ego-tickling for a parent, it is not exactly the truth. Every year, the various Plus 2 boards of the country are also rising to the occasion by getting liberal in granting marks. While that is quite exalting for students in general, the sad side story is that the gap between good, average and bad students are being artificially erased. While a good student has good reason to be piqued at being on the same class as a known dud, a dull head gets a halo through no effort on his part, beyond honouring the hall ticket. Well, we wanted meritocracy. Now meritocracy is getting manufactured as if on an assembly line with adjustable marks as the final QC. In the years to come, students, schools and school boards are more likely to get high on the steroid of scores. Artificial intelligence is no longer a Spielberg fantasy but an educational reality. God knows how those puffed up teen balloons would fare in the exam of life which teems with needles and darts.
The affliction has caught on to colleges too. With educational institutions turning placement agencies, colleges routinely tamper with their discretionary ‘Internal assessment’ to make their wards more job worthy. A college with a fair assessment system is actually doing a disservice to its students’ life prospects! But that may be the future shock, though not very distant. In the immediate, as school boards and colleges get imaginative on how to put students on the score spiral, the students themselves have to toil long and hard in the face of such disruptions and modern distractions. Student life was a blooming garden of smiles in the bygone days; today it is a vile and desolate desert, with the hot sands of infinite syllabus to tread, the harsh winds of competition to face and the prickly cactii of an insensitive system to reckon with. And the absence of elective choices wherein a student can take shelter under a favourite subject to escape from a compulsory add-on makes that life even more barren. Correction. Deserts have oases. But none here.
The screwed up education system, mortgaged to money, queered by quotas and mauled by ‘managed’ merit, is already taking a heavy toll on those it is intended to serve. Rather, students need to be saved and salvaged from this stifling demon what with depression, drug-addiction and suicides keeping pace with the rising cut-off marks. A recent report says a girl committed suicide soon after the exam fearing she would fail. She passed away before she actually passed. Now, this girl was a smart one and knew she will not fail. So why did she choose to end her life? Because, for her anything less than 95% was akin to failing. And on her walk home to her tryst with the noose, she was killed a thousand times by the monstrous troika of peer, parental and performance pressures!
Governance failure as usual is at the root. For instance, this academic season from April to June, we all know that our HRD minister Sibal was busy with everything other than his portfolio. Instead, the community of parents and professors has to pitch in as the real test is for them. They can start by humbly recalling their own report cards which in most cases would contain everything to be humble about. Children are national assets. They will inherit the world, or whatever is left of it, after we are done. It is a sin to push our wards to the IC wards. Let’s recognise the morbid reality that the distance between the womb and tomb is shortening by the day. It is a greater tragedy to have our own blood on our hands!
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